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Saturday, 13 April 2013

Toybox REVIEW: Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger Minipla Kyoryuzin

With Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger well underway and the DX line on the shelves since its premiere, it's time to take a look at the cheaper alternative to those big clunky toys. After a fairly impressive year with Go-Busters, it's time for Kyoryuger main mecha Kyoryuzin to get the minipla treatment. If you are unfamiliar with the minipla line, these are smaller model kits that include stickers and usually feature far more articulation than their larger counterparts - including knees and elbows.

Despite Kyoryuger featuring a 5-piece team, the mecha bizarrely uses a 3-piece formation with Green and Black's Zyudenryu being used for an alternate formation (named Kyoryuzin Western, whose parts are included in the second minipla release). This first set includes Gabutyra (made up of two boxes), Stegotchi and Dricera - who come in one box each. Included is the usual piece of soda flavoured candy, this time in a clover shape rather than the usual circle.

I have chosen to paint parts of my minipla while also using the stickers, and as such the pictures below reflect that. If you would like to see what Kyoryuzin looks like using the stickers alone, please visit THIS BLOG.

GABUTYRA

First up we have Gabutyra, Kyoryu Red's partner and the largest Zyudenryu included in this set. The first box of the tyrannosaurus includes his top section, while the second box includes the arm section and legs. While easily the most complicated kit in this selection, Gabutyra is still a very easy model kit to get to grips with for beginners and shouldn't take you too long to finish.

Gabutyra features a decent array of articulation, including a moving jaw, moving arms, a rotating waist, hip articulation and ball jointed feet. Just about enough poseability to pull off Gabutyra's rather active personality. With the battery gimmick stripped from the minipla release of the Kyoryuger toys, Gabutyra has a rather unsightly arm port sticking out of his neck.

With a larger stature comes more detailing, and unfortunately Gabutrya is missing quite a few of the details present on the show model and DX toys. The stickers do a pretty god job of covering the silver detailing, but the yellow sections are particularly unsightly. The worst offender is his tail, which is moulded in black despite being entirely yellow - and the stickers do a poor job of relaying this. If you've done some model painting in the past, you'll know just how much of a pain it is to paint yellow on any kind of plastic, let alone black. Gabutyra's feet also are half red, but here are moulded entirely in black.

STEGOTCHI

While Gabutyra is what you'd usually expect from the minipla line, Stegotchi is where we begin to encounter some of the shortcomings in this year's Kyoryuger selection.To put it most simply, Stegotchi is tiny - not much taller than Gabutyra's feet. As such the kit itself is incredibly simple. Even if you're a beginner to the world of minipla and model kits I can't see this taking you much longer than 5-10 minutes to complete (that's if you're using the stickers rather than paint of course).

Articulation isn't particularly plentiful, but there is some. The stubby little lets can rotate 360 degrees, the mouth can open and close (which is mainly due to the combining gimmick rather than an actual feature) and the sword section in the centre of the spines can swing upwards). The tail itself is a solid piece and cannot move. Unlike his T-Rex friend, all the extra detailing is provided via stickers here bar the black fists. However how good you think the details are is a matter of preference - I personally chose to paint all the yellow detailing and silver pipes on myself.

DRICERA

Finally we come to Dricera, Kyoryu Pink's dino partner and the only female representation we have in the series thus far (for the sake of this review I'm assuming Dricera is also female right now). Dricera is also horrifically tiny, which pretty much confirms that if you aren't Gabutrya, Pteragodon or the rumoured Spinosaurus and Plesiosaur Zyudenryu you're going to be consigned to a tiny figure like this.

The articulation level is pretty much the same as Stegotchi's (moving mouth, stubby legs) but Dricera's unique features are a little more interesting. As well as a moving gun arm....thing, Dricera's badass drill tail can also extend in two sections. Both the full tail itself and the smaller yellow tip can pull out. The only real colour details missing is the black on the gun arm (its moulded in pink plastic) and fist, but I also painted the yellow and the silver drill since the wrap-around sticker was frankly awful.

So that's the three Zyudenryu in their individual forms. Gabutyra is pretty much what you'd expect from this line other than the amount of paint work he needs to look accurate (of course this is perfectly optional), but Stegotchi and Dricera are a little more disappointing. Even though they do about as much as mecha limbs usually do, they are extremely small and compared to the great playability of the Go-Buster mecha feel a little lacklustre. How does the combined form fare though? Let's find out...

KYORYUZIN

SIM-HA! SIM-HA-HA!

With the entirety of the body bar the arms made up from Gabutyra, the transformation is rather impressive but still relatively simplistic. Remove Gabutyra's legs and rotate the waist section, while also flipping the leg sections down and opening the panels attached, reattaching the legs as the instructions show. Meanwhile the "yellow" section of the tail and open it up, removing Kyoryuzin's head and attaching the tail to the robot's back to make up the cape-like section. Plug Kyoryuzin's head in and voila! You have the main body of the lastest dino robot!

Forming the arms in a little less impressive. Both include folding the legs into each other (you'll know if you've done it right because the yellow lines will connect) and opening the Zyudenryu's mouths so that the connection ports can be inserted. In Stegotchi's case remove the spine section needs to be removed, while for Dricera flip the gun arm piece in the opposite direction and extend the drill tail.

Kyoryuzin is pretty well armed in terms of weaponry, featuring the obvious drill arm and then a sword/shield combo made from Stegotchi's spine section. Simply flatten the spines out to form the shield, and then put them back to normal and flip out the sword for the Goren Zyudenken mode. Just don't do what I did and accidentally miss connecting the sword handle piece to Stegotchi. Thankfully, a mini revoltech joint worked just as well.

Then we come to articulation, which is by far the sorest point in this set. While the usual shoulder, waist, hip, knee and feet articulation is there, Kyoryuzin is completely missing any form of elbow joint. Elbow articulation has been a staple of the minipla line for many years now, and to suddenly see it missing on Kyoryuzin is not only baffling, but it severely reduces his play value. You could come up with the most epic of poses from the waist down, but its not much good when all the robot is capable of is sticking his arms completely outright.

If you're curious how Kyoryuzin stacks up in terms of size, below is a quick comparison with minipla Go-Buster Ace and GokaiOh. As you can see height-wise it's somewhere inbetween. It seems a little disappointing given fellow 3-piece mecha EngineOh is taller, but since we don't know what plans there are for larger Kyoryuger mecha it's hard to give proper judgement yet. It's also a fairly decent size given the entirety of the robot's size is coming from Gabutyra.

So the final verdict on Kyoryuzin? It isn't a BAD robot by any means, but the set itself certainly feels like a step backwards in comparison to the minipla of the last few years. The limbs are pretty unimpressive in terms of size, and the lack of elbows severely lacks the level of poseability - one of the main draws of getting these over the DX line in the first place (other than size and price). If this indication is anything to go by, the Kyoryuger line's main fun factor is the batteries, and without them what's left comes off as fairly average.